Dushau tdt-1

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

She’d never been a philosopher, never been very introspective. She had no tools to grapple with this land of conflict.

  Jindigar sprawled across the bottom of her bed, propping himself up on his elbows seemingly without pain. He regarded her in silence as she thought. The image of him lying dead at her feet flashed, vividly enough that she was surprised when there was no mud left on the sheets. But that bereft, dead feeling was back full force. She couldn’t send him off to face troops again, while she sat in orbit and waited.

  “Yes, I want to go,” she answered at last. “If you’re not going to give up on your friends—”

  “No. I’m not giving up. Arlai intercepted a news traffic-capsule, read it, and returned it to its route. The situation on Khol is desperate. Several hundred Dushau were stranded there. They’ve either all been executed, or perhaps spirited away by a mysterious resistance movement. But they’ve only just begun hunting down my associates.

  “Krinata, you know there’s always been a large Dushau population on Khol. It’s a prime jumping-off place for expeditions, and it has some of the finest Corporate League libraries and museums left in existence. Fully a third of the population must be acquainted with at least one Dushau.”

  “Well, then maybe it won’t be so bad there. Maybe your friends will be safe.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing could save her even four years ago. It’ll be worse now.”

  “Her?”

  ‘Terab. She was a space liner captain. My eldest son was deadheading to Khol—he’s a freighter captain—to meet his ship. In deep space, alone among Ephemerals, he went into Renewal. She made a nonscheduled stop to drop him at Dushaun. She was cashiered for it, and blackballed. Now, she and her husband run a souvenir pottery shop.”

  The terse recital raised a thousand questions for Krinata, but above that curiosity, she felt Jindigar’s sense of responsibility for this Holot, Terab. She was willing to bet Jindigar had provided the money to set up the shop. “Jindigar, I want to help you rescue Terab. But I have to ask you something first.” She stopped, not knowing how to phrase a question that wasn’t also accusation.

  “All my resources are at your disposal. Arlai and I will provide any information we can. But I can’t encourage you to risk your life again. I will go down to Khol alone.”

  She didn’t feel up to arguing, but knew she wouldn’t rest until she could judge him. “Jindigar, societies must have codes of law to function. One who refuses to abide by its codes can’t belong to that society, and thus is treated with under the rules for strangers or enemies. I’ve always thought of myself as an Allegiancy loyalist. At heart I still am, though I’ve committed political crimes. But on Cassr, imperial troops died, a moral crime as well as political. I’ve become an enemy of the Allegiancy.”

  She paused to fight back-tears, and he asked calmly, “What was your question?”

  “Were you and Arlai always enemies of the Empire? Some of the things you’ve done are simply illegal, some—like giving Arlai such freedom—seem unmoral. What code of law do you obey? Is your society an enemy of the Empire?”

  His face underwent several transformations as he considered. “Are you asking if Dushaun is an enemy of the Empire?”

  That was her question, but she prompted, “Is it?”

  “No.”

  That quiet statement gave her no clue to his sincerity or to the answer to her question. “Are you?”

  “No.” Into her silence, he added, “Neither are you.”

  “People have died!”

  “I mourn.”

  She knew how much more Dushau suffered from death than Ephemerals, but she had to ask, “Is that enough! Are we blameless because we mourn?”

  “No. And no. Krinata, you’re asking me the purpose of life, the nature of death, the spiritual and material structure of reality, the origin and end of existence, and my identity within that structure and process. And you’re expecting me to expound all of this in one breath.”

  “Can you?”

  “Not so that you’d understand what I meant.”

  “Try me,” she challenged.

  He regarded her with a light of speculation growing in his wideset indigo eyes. Inexplicable thrills rushed up and down her spine as she perceived doors opening into his soul. Finally, he gave a deep sigh and sat up in his whule playing position, back straight, head slightly bowed as he breathed slowly and deeply. “Arlai, show her the Oliat signature.”

  Beside the bed a shaft of gray and white smoke lit an area from ceiling to floor. The lights in the room dimmed. After a long silence, a hologram of a strike of lightning etched down the column, seemingly as bright as the real thing, branching and rebranching until it reached ground and doubled back on itself, lashing up and down several times in slowed motion. It was accompanied by the unmistakable crack of a nearby lightning strike.

  Warned, Krinata only flinched at the sound and squinted into the sudden brightness. The flash ended and the frame froze showing the fully branched tree of lightning. When hearing returned, she noticed Jindigar was humming. It was a low, gravely sub-musical sound, nasal, hardly articulated. The sound engulfed her and she felt as if she were inside a powerbeam. She realized he’d begun just as the lightning flashed. It went on a long, long time, until she thought she could feel the surging, churning of protoplasm in every cell of her body. She imagined she could feel every photon impinging on her skin. She could see with her whole body, which was the ship. Endless, infinite space dotted with seething life habitats, radiant beauty surrounded her. She became one with life everywhere, organizing matter into more and more complex forms, exulting, enraptured.

  As his breath ran out, the sound ended, his eyes drooped closed, and he continued to sit, head bowed. As far as she could see he wasn’t breathing. She stared, vaguely guilty, as if a high priest had revealed a sacred mystery to a noninitiate. She didn’t have the capacity to take that initiation. She didn’t have the will. Yet, spellbound, she wished she did, imagined she did. Buried within that simple experience were vistas of reality she had never dreamed existed. The more she saw of Jindigar’s spiritual world, the more she realized the vastness of her ignorance, and the more she hungered to experience his reality. Yet, even if she lived a thousand years, she could never even scratch the surface. And humans rarely lived two hundred ears.

  At last. Jindigar looked up, head tilted inquiringly. “That’s the best I could do, not being in Renewal. You’re the best debriefing ecologist I’ve ever worked with. If any Ephemeral could glimpse it, you could.”

  She held her breath, oddly reluctant to dash his obvious hope, peculiarly warmed to gain such a compliment from such a consummate professional Oliat officer. But she called herself to the brutal honesty she was asking of him, and said, “I’m sorry, even though you made me imagine what it would be like to understand, I still don’t see a relationship between music, lightning, space, planets, the origin of life, ecstasy and whether you’re an outlaw or a hero.”

  He seemed slightly disappointed, but chiding himself as if he’d expected the letdown. “I’m certainly no hero, Krinata, but if I were an enemy of the Allegiancy, would I not attempt to interfere with the Allegiancy’s self-determination rather than running from it with as many of those I owe a personal obligation as I can? Would I not be trying to convince you to turn against the Emperor and dethrone him? Zavaronne could do that.”

  “Then why aren’t you doing those things? Is it only because we lost Trassle’s proof in that viewer?” She felt she was on the trail of her answer.

  “There were ten copies. One of them will be brought to light soon, I’m sure. But there would have been nothing we could have done with ours. Coming from a Dushau or a known collaborator with Dushau, such evidence would be too easily dismissed as sedition.”

  Disturbed, he rose and paced the room, his old grace returned so that every move was a song. “Yet, even when the truth comes to light, it won’t change anything. Zinzik may be deposed, but someone else—probably worse—w
ill come to power. It’s the Allegiancy itself that has decayed beyond saving. Zinzik is only a symptom, not a cause.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she challenged.

  He faced her again, speaking with a trembling reverence he reserved only for the elder Dushau. “Grisnilter has seen six Ephemeral civilizations die of old age, and he carries memories of even older cycles reaching back before the human species’ ancestors discovered the club. Our tangible, incontrovertible facts are only a hypothesis to you. I hope you won’t find it condescending if I point out that, because of our differing lifespans, your values must be based on a different view of reality than ours? I respect your view, Krinata, but I can’t live inside it.”

  “I think that’s what’s bothering me. I’ve seen you doing illegal things, and that disturbs me. I don’t know why. It didn’t bother me when I broke a prisoner of the Emperor out of jail after the Emperor had as much as declared me an outlaw. What else could I have done, gone happily to execution?” If I’d had Trassle’s document then, I’d have taken it to the College of Kings, and none of this would have happened. But Jindigar was right, if they had it they couldn’t use it now.

  “Some people are going to their deaths, dutifully if not happily. I’ve always sensed a, well, a kinship in you. That you chose, in a snap decision, to defy an insane imperial decree merely confirms my judgment. That element in you which recognizes and acts is an Aliom ideal few Dushau ever achieve. Your misgivings show me you’ve achieved that ideal, if only in your unconscious life.”

  “Aliom ideal?” Again, she felt she was on to something.

  But there was a pained sadness flickering through his wideset eyes as he nodded, and paced another circle. “The philosophy or life system I adhere to is called Aliom. There is no Dushau philosophy, Dushau religion or culture, any more than there are human ones. Many human systems contain elements lauded by one or another of our systems.”

  “Tell me about Aliom.”

  He smiled softly, and gestured to the displayed lightning flash. “I just did. All about it.”

  “Oh.”

  He hooked one knee over the back of a chair and perched there, settling as if about to lecture. She felt a sinking disappointment when he only asked, “Why don’t you ask me about specific acts of mine, and let’s see if I can explain.”

  “Well,” she thought, sorting through the myriad questions plaguing her. “Why, if we are trying to rescue people you feel obligated to, rescue them from enemies who’d kill them, why were you so careful not to injure any of those enemies on the Intentional Act?”

  “Because we’re not rescuing my friends from my enemies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Again he seemed to grope through his mind. She added, “Don’t you realize that imperial troops will be against us all the way now? Trassle and his wife killed without compunction to rescue us. We’ll have to kill now too. People who kill each other are usually enemies.”

  He looked at her blankly. “They are?”

  She was dealing with a member of a species not evolved from predators. “Usually they are. Those imperial troops are certainly going to look at it that way. By disregarding imperial commands and by killing imperial troops, we’ve declared ourselves enemies of the Allegiancy.”

  “I’m beginning to understand your problem,” he said, again groping for a referent. “Krinata, can you for a moment regard this situation from the Dushau point of view? Picture the Allegiancy as a wild giant piol pup that’s come to live in our back garden. We’ve fed it, played with it, taught it a few things, and watched it grow, expecting it to turn feral as non-domesticated animals often do. But it’s remained friendly and never hurt us. Now it’s old and senile. But it’s huge, with sharp claws and wild instincts. In its death throes, it thrashes about the garden, destroying—but blindly, without malice. There’s nothing we can do to save it. We can only collect our valuables from the garden and run in the house and slam the door.”

  For an instant, she did see it. There was no way an Immortal could be enemy to an Ephemeral. But the Ephemeral might feel victimized or trapped and spend a lifetime fighting the Immortal—futilely. She could only stare at Jindigar, for the first time comprehending what he was and wondering why he even noticed Ephemerals, let alone felt he owed them anything.

  She almost asked him, but he said, “I’m sorry I said that. It sounds as if I’m regarding you as wild beasts. A beast could be put out of its misery if necessary. The Allegiancy can’t. It must live out its natural span.”

  “I think I know what you mean. You said you recognize a trait in me that your philosophy lauds. That puts me a cut or two above a mere animal, doesn’t it?”

  “Many cuts.”

  “But what about those Cassrian troops who died? If you’d had the weapon, would you have killed them?”

  “No.” There seemed to be no conflict in him over that instant answer. “I’m Dushau, Krinata. Killing is not one of our methods of survival.” Again he sighed, groping for some way to reach her. “Evolved predators have to fight to subdue the killing instinct and break the chains of karma. Evolved prey have to struggle just as hard, transcend their natures, to subdue the hide/flee instinct.” He met her eyes. “I don’t think I could kill even to save Dushaun from certain destruction.” He frowned, adding, “Though someone like Lelwatha or even Grisnilter might.”

  She was nowhere near him, yet she could almost feel an invisible tremor shaking his body, a fear not quite subdued. He was prey baring himself to a predator with no hope of survival. Thou shalt not kill would be a totally superfluous commandment to Dushau. “I guess that was a stupid question. And I’ve got an even worse one.”

  “I will answer.”

  She scanned the room. “And Arlai? Could he kill?”

  He calmed as he said, “You’ve believed those scare stories about Sentients destroying the League? That’s as much nonsense as Dushau conspiring to strangle the Allegiancy. Think! Why would Sentients do such a thing?”

  She searched his eyes, finding only innocence. “Because they felt wronged, kept down, used, abused.”

  “You don’t think it’s abuse to strap and hamper a free mentality with the stringent Allegiancy programming?”

  She granted that silently, and he called, “Arlai, why did you stay with me when you found out what the Allegiancy insisted on doing to you?”

  Arlai vanquished the gray column with its lightning display and projected his Dushau simulacrum there. “Because you’d won my highest regard. You were my friend. I hope we’ll always be friends.”

  “And didn’t I promise you it wouldn’t be forever, just until

  the Allegiancy’s lifecycle was over?”

  “Yes. But I’d have stayed anyway. The alternative was to be turned off, as Thirlein has been.”

  “We’ll do what we can for her, Arlai.” He turned to Krinata again. “Arlai was not educated by a professional who turned him over to me. I was there when he first came to consciousness, and I educated and trained him. I’m as much a father to him as possible. Under League law, that was the requirement for owning a Sentient. Personally, I feel the Allegiancy’s commerce in mass-produced Sentients is horrifyingly abusive. Krinata, Arlai consented to wear chains on his free will and initiative merely to stay with me, and I freed him as soon as I ethically could. If I hadn’t, we’d be dead by now. But he has no desire to harm incarnates. And his programming includes the injunction against doing such harm. He hurts when it happens by accident, just as much as we do.”

  She was aware of the Sentient standing patiently beside Jindigar. “I’m sorry Arlai, I don’t mean to talk about you as if you were a thing. I do trust you, but…”

  “I understand, Krinata. Slaves are expected to revolt. But we’re not slaves. We’re a different life form, with different methods of survival.”

  “What methods?” asked Krinata. Then she remembered the escape from Act. “Jindigar, you kept telling Thirlein that she mustn’t hurt anyone. You
’d given her the same freedom you’ve given Arlai. Why don’t you keep telling Arlai not to injure incarnates?”

  “Thirlein is much younger than Arlai, and hadn’t matured free of Allegiancy chains. She was already under extreme stress when we boarded Act, and she hadn’t been properly prepared for her freedom. I simply didn’t trust her. She’ll have to be handled very carefully when we wake her.”

  “Sentients are individuals, just like the members of any other species,” said Krinata. “There could have been criminal Sentients. By Allegiancy law, Arlai’s a criminal.”

  “What is it you want me to say?” asked Jindigar, “The concepts of law and criminal don’t translate from Standard to Dushauni. Are you insisting we must obey the letter of Allegiancy law, even now we’ve been cast out by the Emperor?”

  Put that way, it did sound absurd. “Sensible people don’t obey laws because they’re laws, but because they’re right, or sometimes because uniform standards are necessary to keep a society functional. Is it right to just pick which laws it’s convenient to obey?”

  “Right? Now I see what’s bothering you.” He wasn’t groping this time. He pulled both feet onto the chair so he was sitting on the back, then leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, eyes piercing her as he said earnestly, “I have consciously chosen to follow a very stringent code of ethics derived from the Aliom philosophy. My ethic kept me bound to Allegiancy law because of my vow to the first Emperor. When that vow was made null by Zinzik’s betrayal, I no longer felt any call to consider Allegiancy law. But that doesn’t mean I’m free to trample other people’s rights by my personal whim. My conscience still measures my deeds against the Aliom code, and I must answer for those deeds when next I face Renewal. And Renewal can be a harsh judge of souls, Krinata.” The expression on his face and in his voice made her shudder with the truth of that. And she didn’t know why.

  “You, however, have unconsciously derived your ethical code from Allegiancy culture and law. When it abandoned you, you acted to survive, and then had to answer to your conscience. What you’ve been asking me, Krinata, is to give you a new system to replace the old. And I can’t do that. You’re going to have to do that for yourself.”